Awake again. Frightened, scared to breath. Where’s the pain? It was sure to come back. Through a nearby window I saw the suns weak first rays push the night back. One whole day, twenty four hours, hope, just a little and then none. For the third time, the fuck you train ran me over, immediate and intense, no warning and no build up. I wanted the pain to stop. All alone.
It was a blood clot. It had travelled through the site of the operation, destroying all the surgeon’s good work, and then it passed through my heart and hit my right lung. Pulmonary embolism, to this day I have nightmares about it. I survived, many don’t, it blew away any notions I had of invincibility.
The train didn’t come back again. I was genuinely happy to be alive maybe even a little euphoric. After two days I was up and moving. Visitors came and went, they brought food, drinks and magazines. Blanchardstown is a great little hospital and clean, they could teach Beaumont a lesson or two about it. I was now under a respiratory team. The P.E took precedence over everything else. It was immediately life threatening whereas cancer could take a while. I didn’t want it to take a back seat. To me, I had a sixty day deadline to meet. I was going to get interferon, no matter what. After a week, I tried to contact oncology, first in Blanchardstown and then in Beaumont. Despite repeated attempts I never saw a single soul from oncology for the twenty eight days I spent in Blanchardstown. I cannot explain how frustrating and frightening that was.
Boredom is my biggest enemy in hospital. I can’t stay in bed all day. Before the first week was over, I’d explored all the accessible areas. I found a little chapel at two in the morning on the sixth day, the door was locked. At ten the next morning I went back. The door was open and two people were sat inside silently praying. I went in sat down and savoured the silence for a few minutes. I thanked god that I hadn’t died, as I said earlier I’m not religious, but it couldn’t do any harm to be grateful. As I walked back to the ward I felt my pj bottoms sticking to my left leg. They were soaked through. I was immediately embarrassed. I knew I hadn’t pissed myself but it sure as hell looked like I did. I pulled the curtains around the bed and took off the bottoms. The dressing over the crease of my left groin was soaked through. My leg was soaked with a slightly discoloured liquid. I called a nearby nurse. The dressing was changed but two hours later it was soaked through again. It was lymph fluid. It was one of the risks of the operation. I don’t understand the mechanics of if. The fluid builds up, the hope is that the body will redirect it. If it doesn’t it has to come out somewhere, in this case it came out through the wound in my groin. I ended up using big old style sanitary towels on top of the normal dressing to keep my pjs dry. The rot literally set in. They don’t call it rotting in hospital, they call it necrotising.
It necrotised for two weeks. I was desperate for something to be done. I redoubled my efforts to get oncology involved but I was in the wrong hospital. The lowest point came in the third week. At night when I lay down I pulled the hospital linen up to my neck and put my nightgown on top. The aim was to prevent the horrific smell of my own rotting flesh from making me vomit. It didn’t work. Heaving, holding a grey container full of puke, it was all too much. A genuine good guy was trying to help me.
“Put vics under your nose” he advised “it’s a trick we use with cadavers”.
His intentions were genuine, his concerns real, but still it summed up how I felt. I wasn’t exactly the walking dead, but I wondered how much lower I could go. The surgeon came to my rescue. My parents contacted him direct and he arrived in Blanchardstown. He carried an air of authority with him. At last someone was in control. I found all the staff in Blanchardstown unrivalled in their caring attitude. I felt much safer there than I had in Beaumont but still I was going backwards. The surgeon arrived at the bedside with several others. He examined the wound.
“We will take care of this” he told me. The following day he was back. He and another cut away all the dead flesh and cleaned up the wound. Special dressings were brought in and every day after a registrar changed the bandages. The wound was open. It was so deep and so wide that it couldn’t be closed. Instead, wadding was packed into the open hole and then covered with a concave waterproof bandage. It stopped the lymph juice coming through and a healing process could begin. In Blanchardstown they were brilliant at preventing infection, hand sanitizers, double gloved, the whole works. A week later I was discharged with an appointment for oncology in Beaumont and a bag full of bee stings. The bee stings were blood thinning syringes. I had to inject one into the fatty flesh layer of my belly, one every day. They’re called bee stings because that’s how they felt. I also had the phone number of the local health nurse who was to take over the dressing. Thirty five days had passed since the lymph operation. In my mind, I had twenty five days left to get interferon, twenty five days and counting.
I can’t leave Blanchardstown without telling the story of John and the ‘Aller Man’. I find hospital a lonely place. Visiting times break the monotony but the rest of the time is humdrum and solitary. Other patients are the greatest source of support. Getting to know other oncology patients is a double edge sword. Someone had warned me very early on not to get emotionally involved because people die. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but in Blanchardstown, three people I met, talked to and joked with, died. One was John, a lovely man from Ashbourne. He was admitted about the same time as me. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. For four or five days we met up downstairs with anyone else who made it down. It was a laugh a minute. We joked about each others ailments, how we looked and much more. On the fifth day he stopped coming down. His wife still did, she was there every day, and then he died. It was so sudden, admitted for tests and never to come out again. Then there was the ‘Aller Man’. He was placed in the bed opposite mine. He was probably sixty but looked younger. His life was dogs. All types of dogs, but his favourites were his Alsatians. They were working dogs used to guard this place and that. The aller man was the leader of the pack. For all the world he looked like an Alsatian standing on its hind legs. He was dying, he was never specific but his lungs were failing. He ran his doggy empire from his hospital bed. He issued instructions to his grownup sons when they visited. Chip this dog, sell that one and get the bitch put down. The bitch was the second in command of the pack. He explained that she had turned on him the previous week. She had sensed his weakness and as he fed the pack she turned on him. He was lucky to get away from her. So long had he worked with the bitch that it was impossible to have someone else take her over.
“She’ll never work for anyone else” he explained “one person dog, she’s not a pet. She’s a weapon. I have to put her down, she’s too dangerous”.
I knew it was a hard decision for him but he didn’t hesitate. The dog was put down. He was a proud man. He hated anyone fussing over him. He told his wife everything was ok even though both of them knew it was not. We bolstered each others courage during tough moments. We didn’t complain, just encouraged each other to get through it. I will never forget the aller man. There was something very John Waynesque about him.
Chapter Four
Interferon, Interfering, Isolation
One day out and Mary was screaming at me. A month of pent up anger was released in my face. I was too friendly with other patients, I was having an affair. I didn’t care about her. I was a lazy bastard, a prick on crutches.
It wasn’t true. That month I spent in Blanchardstown was by far the longest time I had ever spent away from Mary and the children. The kids had visited with Mary on several occasions but still I missed them desperately. All the time I was there I wanted home. Mary didn’t like me being away from her at all. Her reaction was a variation of the same response I’d become used to for years. If I spent any time away from her I was sure to get a tirade. Even when I was at work I had to check in with her regularly, if I didn’t, the accusations were fired at me. It was a way of life I’d become accustomed to.
Getting the dressing changed was my first priority. I rang the number I had been given for the local health nurse. It took a few times to catch her.
“You have to come to the clinic” she told me. She was far too busy to make a house call. I arranged to be there